Fed up with that endless list of headaches and expenses? If you’ve been racing against the clock and worried about cash flow, you are not alone. You may be talking with your friends, neighbors, and families about the problems of keeping your small business going strong in turbulent conditions. Here are three ways you can save money and avoid headaches in your small business.
Prevention saves money
As a big idea, prevention is less expensive than curing a problem. While you already know this from life experience, it is easy to forget when things are urgent, critical and pressured. If you’ve been putting off standard maintenance and repair, the end of the year is a great time to cross things off your To-Do List.
What can you do in the realm of prevention? Let’s start with your humble office printer. Printing plays a key role in many businesses, yet it is often a bit neglected when it comes to maintenance and repairs. If you have not focused on printer repair, you may have what seemed like good reasons. Perhaps your favorite go-to employee is busy on other projects.
Maybe you have an old model that is working and you don’t want to fix it because it’s not fully broken. Instead of waiting for a full breakdown, though, it’s far better to get an expert to handle your maintenance and servicing. Your team will thank you, and you won’t have a printer emergency in the middle of a rush job.
Workplace productivity saves headaches
The big idea is that workplace productivity requires employee training and development. This has risen to the surface in the context of the last year. Our workplace has changed in ways that few people anticipated. Sure, we expected remote teams and working from home. However, we did not expect it would happen so rapidly or so completely.
While we are working remotely, we need to have an even higher investment in employee training and support. Without face-to-face interactions, people are relying even more on virtual communication skills. This isn’t just how to write an email, be effective in a video conference, or produce a compelling presentation.
The more we work virtually, the more we need help with increasing productivity. Some professionals struggle with finding a work-life balance. They are dealing with complex human interactions such as homeschooling, providing childcare, or offering eldercare—while focusing on intricate work projects.
As a small business owner, your job just got more intense. What is your commitment to training and professional development? Are you preparing your employees to succeed? Are you offering tips and tricks to handle the day-to-day issues, such as how to avoid an afternoon slump, stay active while working from home, or turn off after an intense workday?
Employee satisfaction saves money
Are your employees happy with working at your company? This may be due to a combination of factors including your company culture, policies around work-life balance, and compensation. By asking your employees, you can help to raise your satisfaction scores. This isn’t quite as simple as coming out and saying, “Are you happy working here?”
Naturally, many employees out of politeness and good manners will say, “Sure!” Instead, a more intensive and data-driven approach is to explore issues while enabling people to give candid answers. This can be done through a series of surveys, assessments, and employee-driven meetings. In these methods, you can explore how employees feel about work-life balance initiatives.
This could include the formal and informal codes of conduct such as emails and phone calls after 5 p.m., or on weekends. It can include standard operating procedures for urgent, emergency, or deadline projects. Also investigate how your employees feel about their relationships with managers, teammates, and senior staff.
Do they feel acknowledged, respected, and included in group decisions? Are new hires invited into the group, without having to go through an uncomfortable waiting period? As you look closer, you’ll discover the true answers about employee satisfaction. Once you find out how people genuinely feel, you can take action to do more of what employees value—and less of what they don’t value.
This effort can lead to having a happier and more satisfied team of employees, a happier culture, and an organization that is poised to attract top talent. Whether you’re closing out the year or getting a jump on the next one, these three tips can help you pave the way for a happy, productive workforce.